


how to tell the difference between ashes and seeds

by yum_cy



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Aftermath of Genocide, Character Study, Gen, Trauma, aftermath of war, and an evolved airbender culture, i dont believe for one second that none of the airbenders escaped, so there are a bunch of airbenders in hiding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:00:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25770223
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yum_cy/pseuds/yum_cy
Summary: [ Nothing is like the wind-smoothed walls he trailed his hands along, the open arches and doorways off the third floor. He clings to the paintings that used to curl around the stone, clings to the prayers he chanted, clings to the games only he remembers even existed. Now, the halls are blackened with scorch marks, the courtyards crumbling and cracked.Aang has never held a whole culture in his cupped hands before. He’s afraid he’ll drop it. ]orAang is a century out of time and a day out of war. It's not as easy as straightening his shoulders and shaking it off.
Relationships: Aang & Gyatso, Aang & The Gaang (Avatar)
Comments: 18
Kudos: 97





	how to tell the difference between ashes and seeds

There is beauty in the world after a war. It can’t be seen from the ground, with the streets painted with ash and dried blood and tears that aren’t enough to end the drought, but he can see it from here. The dust is swirling up from the cracks in the road and it means something is changing. People are weeping and mourning and scared, but there’s victory here. In the greasy locks of hair brushed behind ears, in the soldiers finally going home, in the poisons being ripped up at the root.

Aang can still taste iron, even with the wind run across his scalp and the cold air stinging against his eyes. It’s over and Aang thinks it should feel different, should feel like a closing, but every movement feels like a battle. It’s over, but it feels like a beginning, not an end.

(There is fire in his eyes and wind between his fingers. His clothes drip with melted ice and mud is drying on his wrists. His friends are weeping and his family has been dead for a century. The world was burning, embers and sparks turning the heavy smoke that clogged throats and stung eyes into a lightshow. The word has grown used to smoke. They know how to breathe through it. They don’t know how to breathe without it.)

Aang misses Gyatso more than he thought possible, exhaustion and pain swirling heavily in his stomach, against his spine. It tastes like light cream and sponge cake. It tastes like wind-chapped lips and carved wood. It never truly goes away, no matter how many new century delicacies he swallows, no matter how many new hands he holds.

(Nothing is like the wind-smoothed walls he trailed his hands along, the open arches and doorways off the third floor. He clings to the paintings that used to curl around the stone, clings to the prayers he chanted, clings to the games only he remembers even existed. Now, the halls are blackened with scorch marks, the courtyards crumbling and cracked. 

Aang has never held a whole culture in his cupped hands before. He’s afraid he’ll drop it.)

Bumi is old, wrinkled skin and crumpling voice. His hair is wispy around his ears and his legs long and thin. He is a skeleton on a throne, a mad genius with a life Aang never got to see. A life Aang never got to live.

(Does he have the right to be mad, to long for the world he left behind? It sits heavy on his tongue, still warm ash and ice chips. He mourns for the adult he never got to be, the destiny that had to be fulfilled a century late. It’s hard to remember who he could’ve been when Toph springs her full weight on him in a tackle around a corner. It’s hard to remember the life he has when he stares at the carefully whittled symbol on Gyatso’s necklace.)

There is a network of airbenders, hiding amongst the people who tried to kill them, hiding amongst the people that failed to save them. (It’s not their fault.) The chants they know aren’t the chants he knows. They sound different, quiet and short. Easy to hide under one’s breath. The airbenders don’t know the moves he does. They know moves he’s never seen and look at gliders like they’ve never seen them before. They don’t know the world he lived in. It feels like a bit of the people he cup in his hands are dripping away. He’s trying to trust them to catch it. It’s hard when their traditions are so different from his own.

(They aren’t. Not really. He knows the words they whisper, knows the way the wind whistles between their fingers. He knows the fear in their eyes, but not as well as they do. They want to learn, want to feel safe. It’s hard. They ask him to keep them secret. He zips his lips and feels his lungs shake.)

Toph punches him in the arm and Katara pulls him to her chest. They try to hold him steady. They don’t know what it’s like to breath without ash.

(Aang has started breaking things into “they” and “me”. He doesn’t mean to, and it isn’t meant to create a divide, but it’s hard to see the two as one group when everything is so different. When there’s a whole century between the two. He wishes he knew how to stop.)

_(He wishes a lot of things. Wishes don’t come true.)_

It’s just started to sink in that he’ll never see Kuzon, or the Bumi he knew, or Hakana, or any of the friends he made across the entire globe again. Sometimes, Aang still expects Gyatso to walk around a corner and take him to some courtyard to demonstrate a new airbending form or set up a prank. He can’t play Pai Sho without wanting to tear himself apart, lock his younger self in that room and never let him fly out into that storm. It aches, like holding his breath for too long, like wind burned arms and chapped lips.

The air hasn’t been clean for a single month he’s been awake. He chokes on the smog.

(He’s the only one who knows the songs sellers used to sing in Fire Nation markets. He’s the only one who remembers the airbender/firebender joint dances performed at festivals. His spine won’t straighten under the weight.)

Sokka lays an arm across his shoulders and drags him from shop to shop, cracking jokes and rambling about whatever bag he wants to get. Aang can smile a little easier, laugh a little easier when his throat is rough from joking and laughing, when his shins ache from walking. Sokka always ends the day with a kiss on the forehead and a hug tight enough that his ribs creak.

(Aang wonders if his ribs aren’t already broken, shattered and sharp around his lungs. Aang wonders if he has a throat left to ache.)

Zuko never talks on days like this. He sits next to him (always on the left) and listens, soaks every story and heartbreak and tradition up with eyes large enough to swallow the world. He’s always wanted to learn. Aang wonders if it’ll be enough to keep his people alive.

(His people are not dead. They fill the streets, hide behind locked doors, whisper their prayers into the midnight wind. The holidays (loud, colorful, crowded) are small motions done in back rooms and darkened hallways. Aang remembers showing his friends every new trick he learned. These airbenders hide their tricks in the folds of their clothes, in the terror they pretend they don’t feel. His heart aches when he meets a young girl, filled with playful gusts and breezes that cut through the heat, cower against a wall, deny her heritage, her bending, the world her parents built behind drawn curtains.)

Toph flings rocks at him until he can barely keep his eyes open and she’s run out of insults. (He doubts she’s actually out of insults. She loves to come up with new ones.) Then she crumbles like dirt around a gem. She asks him about the sponge cakes and airy frosting. She asks about the bison wool clothes, rolls them between her fingers. She asks him if there was anybody up at the temples that kicked his feet into position the way she does, if there was anybody that made him work until he couldn’t see through sweat. He never answered, but the cracking limestone of her smile couldn’t hide that she knew.

(Pai Sho isn’t as terrifying when Iroh passes him a cup of tea and sits as he heaves over the pieces Gyatso always switched behind his back. This isn’t the world he knows, but it’s the world he lives in. The dust and ash is swirling in the air, clogging his lungs and stinging his eyes.

He’ll clear it, for the little girl who has only ever known war. He’ll clear it for the kids who grew up too fast. He’ll clear it for adults who don’t think it’s possible. He’ll clear it for Gyatso and his cream smeared smile, his white tea laugh, his playful eyes.

He’ll clear it if the entire world crumbles and dust and ash are the only things left.)

**Author's Note:**

> im Jewish and salty about an entire culture being wiped out. i refuse to believe that not a single person or chunk of airbender culture survived.
> 
> sorry this is so unedited, i have recently discovered that running out your door with nothing but your phone and wallet doesnt make it easy to write. (dw im staying with my sister)
> 
> please leave a comment! it really helps me keep writing, even if it's as simple as a key smash.


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